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The Hollow Debates




Round two of the Democrat presidential debates yielded no clear winner.  Biden bounced back, Kamala floundered, Cory hit a positive note, Liz showed she is still the most informed candidate.  Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang finally made names for themselves.  Yang probably did the best simply because he stood up for immigrants, noting that the country is full of successful immigrant stories, like that of his father, and we should quit using immigrants as scapegoats for all our perceived problems.

The problem is that there are too many candidates and too little time to present their cases.  It comes down to who is the most witty or has the best soundbite.  They all went after "Shoeless" Joe Biden after he got hammered in the first debate, but the old man held his ground this time, so moderates can breathe a sigh of relief.  Still, he showed himself to be quite vulnerable, with Tulsi Gabbard serving as his attack dog when she went after Kamala Harris on her prosecutor's record.  Tulsi seems to be angling for the #2 spot on Biden's ticket.

The questions were mostly geared at pitting the candidates against each other, with Jake Tapper being his usual irritable self in confining the candidates to the narrow debate parameters.  I have never been able to understand how news networks let themselves be hijacked by third-rate journalists, whose only job is to make names for themselves. This was a typical CNN reality show debate designed to eliminate candidates, not see what any candidate really had to offer.  In the end you hear more from the "judges" than you do the candidates.  Andrew Yang summed it up well.

Right now, Yang appears to be the most honest and straightforward of the candidates.  He has the luxury of being an outsider who has nothing to lose and everything to gain from these debates.  Marianne Williamson is in a similar position and made the most of her limited opportunities on stage in calling for a more humane society, which I think will probably click with voters who are tired of jaded politicians.

There are too many candidates vying for attention with Trump hogging up much of the media limelight with his outlandish rallies that grow more racist and xenophobic each day.  He is literally drowning out the opposition with his vitriol.  The media obliges the orange blob by amplifying all his horrific comments, just at they did during the 2016 campaign.  Trump sells ad space.  So far, none of the Democrats have been able to bring in a commensurate revenue to warrant significant media attention.

It seems like CNN was hoping to spice things up by purposely pitting the candidates against each other with purposely pointed questions.  It wasn't just Shoeless Joe that came under attack, but all the front runners, as the lesser known candidates vied for attention.  Yang cautioned on falling prey to this style of debate, as it will leave everyone bruised and bloody, but sadly this is what sells ads, which Chris Cuomo noted in the short interview with Yang.

Everyone likes to talk about how the political space needs to open up.  The candidates need room to expound upon their ideas, but the news media doesn't want to give them that space, so the candidates take to the late night talk show circuit to garner a little bit of spotlight.  I'm not sure how effective that is.  Who stays up till 11 o'clock to see candidates pitch themselves on television?

I suppose when the field winnows down to five or six candidates, the news media will give them more space, but until then the Democrats have to vie for polling position to qualify for the monthly debates.  The next one is scheduled for early September.

August is generally seen as a dead month in politics with Congress in recess, and politicians using the time for vacations.  Not much gets done during this month, but candidates can't afford to take any time off and so they take their show on the road, hoping to build up the so-called "ground game" that will carry them through the caucuses and primaries early next year.

In watching The Great Hack, it seems time would be well spent building a strong social media network, as this is apparently what worked so well for Ted Cruz in the early going and eventually Donald Trump.  They essentially cribbed Obama's social media strategy from 2008, courtesy of Brittany Kaiser who went from Team Obama to Cambridge Analytica, and eventually spilled the beans on how CA was able to manipulate voters, particularly in key states.

Still too early to tell how this election will shape up.  I'm hoping against hope that the news media doesn't fall into the same rabbit hole it did last time around.  We need to allow these Democratic candidates to be heard, and so far that hasn't been the case.  The news remains Trump 24/7 and that's the way Team Trump likes it.

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